Yesterday evening Harley, Karen, and I began setting up a brand new site, known as "Proffitt's Prairie". The normal 6th site, Bradford Cemetary, is unable to be run any longer because of a nearby artillery range expansion. "Proffitt's Prairie" is comprised mainly of open oak savanna, with some cleared areas consisting of very thick, bordering on unpenetrable, sumac, grapevine, and blackberry, and other similar plants. This area is burned every three years, and it is in great need of it's scheduled 2011 burn. Ticks are everywhere here, in the two hours we were clearing net lanes yesterday, i pulled 48 off me. This morning was not much better in that regard, even with a thick layer of insect repellent i found 50+, mainly seed ticks. However, the birds here seem almost as numerous as the ticks, we caught 20 birds this morning running only 6 nets, just over half the normal effort of 10 nets.

Bunting, Indigo 4 (one had an ingrown eye, very weird, it was little more than a small slit set way back in the socket)
Chat, Yellow-breasted 1
Hummingbird, Ruby-throated 2
Sparrow, Field 2
Titmouse, Tufted 3
Warbler, Kentucky 3
Warbler, Prairie 3
Wood-Pewee, Eastern 1
Yellowthroat, Common 1

Our apartment's washing machine started flooding this afternoon for a still-to-be-determined reason, soaking the whole laundry room floor and a portion of the hallway carpet. Thankfully, the landlords were on it right away and helped us clean up the mess. Hopefully we won't have to deal with that again any time soon.

Monday, June 7, Karen and I were able to access the banding area at Laughlin Bottoms, despite having to wade through hip-deep water. Reaubidoux Creek was still very high because of the recent heavy rains. Banding-wise, we had a good morning, capturing 23 birds.

Bunting, Indigo 1
Chat, Yellow-breasted 7
Hummingbird, Ruby-throated 1
Redstart, American 2
Vireo, White-eyed 4
Warbler, Blue-winged 3
Warbler, Kentucky 3
Woodpecker, Downy 1
Yellowthroat, Common 1